Idaho lawmakers look at throwing away the "Do Not Call List"
By Jerrod Nielsen CREATED JAN. 24, 2013
A [Idaho] House committee has agreed to debate a bill to lift the ban placed on the ability of telephone companies to make customer cold calls.
The House State Affairs Committee introduced the bill Thursday and sent it to the Business Committee for review.
The bill is being pushed by Minnesota-based Frontier Communications and Louisiana-based CenturyLink Inc. The companies say a 2000 law to end cold calls to customers and create a "Do Not Call" list hampers their ability to market new services to new customers.
" Lobbyist and former Idaho Rep. Jim Clark says the bill gives customers the ability to opt-out from solicitation calls."
So maybe they could make a list of all the customers who opt-out. And they could provide the list to telemarketers and say "Do not call these people". Maybe they could call it a "Do not call list". But there must be some catch that makes it less effective than the existing law, or the lobbyists wouldn't be pushing it.
Hampers? Sounds like I don't fully understand the current state of affairs.
My Understanding:
The Do-Not-Call lists are effective dead because the perpetrators have:
- Moved offshore
- Use VOIP, sometimes with multiple skips (whatever *that* is...)
I have a small folder full of lame-ass letters from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office in response to the complaints I've registered - before I gave up.
Essentially they cite the items above and add that it's too much trouble to prosecute.
Personally, I'm waiting for a standalone (does not require a PC) challenge-response scheme that a non-technical person like myself can implement.
This sounds suspiciously like the sort of stuff ALEC [a], that Big Business Lobbyist Coalition, would be pushing. If so, expect near identical bills to be introduced in 49 other states and the District of Columbia in the next couple of weeks.
I dunno. But any Idaho legislative action is irrelevant to the _federal_ telemarketing rules and federal DNC list.
The existing Idaho law may be stricter than the federal one. the original report is unclear, but it may have prohibited _all_ cold calling =even= where there is a pre-existing relationship. Note well the report says "to make CUSTOMER cold calls." {emphasis added}
There's little need for a _state_ DNC list, when the federal one exists.
This looks to me like 'tempest in a teapot', since Idaho telcos would (a) have to honor federal DNC listings, and (b) maintain their own DNC list, which trumps any "pre-existing relationship" exemption. So, the Idaho action might allow -one- formerly-prohibited 'cold call' from each telco that you are a customer of. Rachel is likely to call more than that.
It probably removes the capability to sue them. Only lawyers can afford to do this, but it's the one thing that's been used successfully. Mark L. Smith
This is one case where "Anonymous" ought to act in the public interest. Somebody should threaten to make public the home phone numbers of every legislator who votes for this bill. Sauce for the goose!
If you'd read the original article, you'd have seen that it's about an Idaho law that prohibits telephone companies from telemarketing to their own customers. The federal DNC list is about telemarketing to non-customers.
I'm inclined to put a petition on the White House web site for a consitutional amendment to make telemarketing punishable by death, with a private right of action. What do you think?
Not at all. With the DNC list in place, legitimate companies who have some interest in not offending potential customers have basically stopped telemarketing people who don't like it. This means the only calls you get (should you opt in) are fraudulent ones.
The fraudulent ones are a tiny fraction of the total number of calls. Before the DNC list, I was getting hundreds of unwanted calls a week, now I get fewer than a dozen.
Time to start sending the complaints to the governor, then.
The only calls I get are from those exempted from the federal DNC regulations: charities, pollsters (or those pretending to be pollsters) and politicians. All just as unwelcome as the guy with the southern accent who wants to sell me vinyl siding.
If Mr. Levine had bothered to read the rest of what I wrote, he'd have found that I explicitly addressed that possible situation -- material he "couldn't be bothered" to include.
It would also have been 'obvious to the meanest intelligence' that I had 'read the original article' since I _quoted_ from it.
Further, mentioning that the federal rules were unchanged was appropriate, because the prior poster (as well as several others) seemed to be confused on that point.
The KIVI TV web-page did not include a cite to either the bill ID or to the statute it purportedly will repeal, thus without more research effort than I was willing to put in there was only the questionable- accuracy reporting of FOX 9. Given _only_ that, one can only speculate as to exactly who is prohibited from performing exactly what actions, or precisely what the proposed changes will allow. If Mr. Levine has a cite to the full text of the Idaho bill, he is cordially invited to share it.
If the existing Idaho law is repealed, then (for someone on the federal DNC list), one preemptive call to each telco _of_which_they_are_a_ _customer_ requesting addition to the company-maintained (per federal requirement) DNC list (which trumps any 'existing relationship' exemption), will prevent any marketing calls from the telcos. This is probably only one call, and _highly_unlikely to require more than three calls.
I say again, the Idaho action is of 'tempest in a teapot' magnitude.
It took about a minute to find the bill, H55. Here's a copy.
formatting link
As you can see, the bill deletes the part of the existing law that makes the DNC list apply to telephone companies soliciting their existing customers, and replaces it with a provision saying that every customer has to opt out indivually.
Since the Federal DNC has an exception for companies annoying existing customers, this would allow a whole lot of legal junk calling by the telcos.
After we got on the federal and Penna state DNC lists, calls stopped totally...completely. We even got a check for about thirty bucks once as our share of a class action suite that the state won against a telemarketer.
That was then...
Now we get at least a half-dozen telemarketer calls *per day* on our land line and the likes of Rachel calls my cell phone several times per week. This is in Pennsylvania. I suspect YYMV depending on how aggressive the state is in pursuing telephone solicitors.
Based on the afore-mentioned stack of lame letters from the Pennsylvania Attorney General's office, my money is on some sort of challenge-response mechanism.
- Somebody calls
- Phone does not ring yet
- "Hello, press 1 for John, press 2 for Mary, press 3 for Sue...... where "99" is the only one that does anything.
- Caller presses the right number, phone rings.
- Experienced callers know to just press the magic number as soon as they hear the connection made.
- Caller presses the wrong number, phone owner gets to program the action - such as dropping into voicemail, just hanging up, ringing the phone with a distinctive ring tone... and so-forth.
Alternatively, automated screening based on caller ID.
For instance:
- Phone owner is able to upload their iPHone or Android phone's phonebook
- When somebody whose number matches a phonebook entry calls, the phone rings
- Of the number doesn't match, phone owner gets to program the response as above...
Right now I'm torn between doing what seems to be the responsible thing: take one for the team and actually talk to the solicitor, stringing them along as long as possible or just saying "Just a moment, I'll find (the person being called) and just putting the phone down and giving the short answer.
Seems like taking one for the team could conceivably get one on a validation list of people who, when called, are approachable - kind of like those junk mail mailings where they ask people to remove a sticker and place it over some other area on the mailing and send it back to their "free prize"...
Perhaps we all should start "outing" the heads of organizations (both for-profit and not) who place these calls, and start publicizing their home phone numbers. I know of one such outfit near here: they tried to defraud me into going to work for them.
***** Moderator's Note *****
How about the name, address, and phone number of the business that placed the call, and the contact info for the state official(s) responsible for taking complaints?
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